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Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 6/21/2002 4:28 AM (GMT -6)

Hi all-

This is just a summary of some thoughts I've had regarding an old point of difference among commentators regarding Rom. 7 (You know, the Pre- and Post-conversion arguments). I'm interested in any thoughts anyone might have.

Tom

----------------------

Summary of Romans Chapter Seven

Rm. 7.14-25 has been understood for the most part as either a description of Paul’s post-conversion life or a description of his pre-conversion life. Differences of opinion exist regarding the extent to which it is believed this passage describes what the ongoing experience of believers will be. I’d like to offer a short summary of why I’m inclined to believe the passage refers to Paul’s pre-conversion experience but that it may also by way of application describe the experience of believers who continue to approach life in the Spirit on the basis of regulation and law.

In 7.1 Paul limits his immediate audience to Jews who know the Law, a point not to be forgotten in interpreting what follows. It is often thought on the basis of 7.15, for example, that since unregenerate people do not in fact hate evil and desire to do what is right Paul must be describing the experience of regenerate persons who, through the new birth, have come to hate evil and love good. It’s often asked, “What sinner shares Paul’s struggle, ‘The good I want I do not do, but rather the very thing I hate, that I do’?” But the fact that Paul addresses this passage to Jews familiar with the Law answers this question, for Jews were raised in the belief that the Law was good and that keeping it pleased God. Paul, like religious Jews before and after him, would have shared this belief before his conversion. His was a culture steeped in the belief of one God, his revealed Law, his choice of Israel, and the unique calling of being a Jew. Thus, there’s nothing about Paul’s hating evil and wanting to avoid it that demands he be a regenerate person. On the contrary, given his Jewish upbringing, his belief in God, and his commitment to the Law as pleasing to God, it makes perfect sense of the frustration he here expresses.

In my view there are good reasons for understanding vv. 14-25 to be Paul’s pre-conversion experience of striving for perfection through the Law (and by implication an illustration of any person, regenerate or not, who seeks to please God through law-keeping).

In 7.2-3 Paul describes the believer’s relationship to the Law of Moses (ostensibly the point of the chapter) through the illustration of marriage. As long as my mate lives, I remain bound to her. Only her death can set me free to marry another. Simple.

This is then applied directly to the believer’s experience in vv. 4-6 (note the “likewise” of v. 4). But it’s important to note that Paul applies BOTH sides of the marriage analogy to the believer’s relationship to the Law: being bound to existing marital obligations while one is alive (analogous to life before faith in Christ) and being freed from one’s marital obligations through death (analogous to life after faith in Christ). Verse 4 relates both of these dimensions in general terms. Our death to the Law through Christ now means fruitfulness for God. Our obligation to the Law has been broken through death, but not the death of the law. Rather, our own death through Christ has freed us from the condemning effects of the law so that we may bear fruit for God.

Verses 5 (“For when we were living…”) and 6 (“But now…”), respectively, unpack v. 4 by offering brief descriptions of the same “before” and “after” dimensions of life relative to one’s relationship to the Law. Keeping in mind the preceding marriage illustration, v. 5 describes the experience of one “obligated” to the Law and under the condemnation of attempting to live by it (pre-conversion), while v. 6 describes the experience of one “discharged” from the Law, remarried (now) to Christ, and free to bear fruit for God (post-conversion). Given this much, it would be strange indeed if in his autobiographical description of “slavery to sin” (7.14) that follows Paul were to give us his “present” spiritual experience as one “discharged” from the Law as an example of a life that has been freed to bear fruit for God. On the contrary, everything about the passage suggests that it describes what one would expect from attempting to do “in the flesh” (comp. 7.5 and 7.18) what we know to be right. In context this is illustrated by way of Paul’s own struggle to please God without the Spirit, but it certainly describes the experience of countless believers who, though dead to the Law, continue to attempt to live life by predicating it on the keeping of religious or ethical laws or principles (does Deit. Bonh. figure in here?)

It is my conviction that in these opening verses, vv. 1-6 of chapter seven, we have the heart of what Paul meant to describe subsequent to chapter six and leading into chapter eight. From 7.7 onwards Paul takes up questions (vv. 7, 13, 24) that arise essentially in response to what he has said in this opening portion of the chapter. Thus, 7.7-25 (in two parts, 7-12 and 13-25 [departing from the conventional division of 7-13 and 14-25—no biggie]) is essentially a commentary on 7.5’s “For when we were living in the flesh…” (i.e., when we under the condemnation involved in being married to the Law) while 8.1-17 is essentially a commentary on 7.6’s “But now…” (i.e., life lived via the Spirit, free from the condemning effects of a life oriented around law-keeping). Simply stated, 7.5 is a microcosm of 7.7-25 while 7.6 is a microcosm of 8.1-17.

As long as it is not believed that 7.14-25 represents what believers are to expect life in the Spirit to be like, there is little practical consequence in adopting the post-conversion view over the pre-conversion view. The frustration of these verses is universally the experience of those who attempt to relate to God and win his favor on the basis of law-keeping, an experience familiar to every religious Jew and exemplified in Paul’s pre-conversion experience as the most religious of them all. The question of whether or not Paul believed his pre-conversion struggle was or could be parallel to anything unregenerate Gentiles might know is beside the point. Paul is here talking to Jews “familiar with the Law.” But the same frustration and bondage certainly can—and does—become the experience of regenerate persons whenever their relationship to God becomes oriented around the keeping of religious or ethical laws or principles, a possibility which chapter eight does hold out to believers as the consequence of “setting the mind on the things of the flesh” (8.5).

Tom

"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde

Edited by - TGB on 06/21/2002 09:31:48 AM

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 6/21/2002 7:45 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Romans, chapter 7 (RSV)

1: Do you not know, brethren -- for I am speaking to those who know the law -- that the law is binding on a person only during his life?
2: Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband.
3: Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
4: Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.
5: While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
6: But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.
7: What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet."
8: But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead.
9: I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died;
10: the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me.
11: For sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me.
12: So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.
13: Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
14: We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.
15: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
16: Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.
17: So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.
18: For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
19: For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
20: Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.
21: So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22: For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self,
23: but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.
24: Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 6/22/2002 2:12 AM (GMT -6)

Tom, let me try.

How about if it is very simple.

Is Paul just laying out a comparison of two things that are for him both presently potentially active? If he lives according to the flesh -- a possibility if he so chooses -- then this... , but living according to the Spirit, then this...? (I wonder.)

Across this seems to be lain the picture of how he can be freed from the law in the first place -- he had to die. (Fortunately for him he can do this in baptism, with Christ.)

This is just a quicky. (Breakfast time for those who call me "dad.")

PotOnWheel

Winghead
Registered Member

Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 132

Posted 6/22/2002 3:39 PM (GMT -6)

I agree with PoW. Rom 7 is explaining what life in the flesh is like. Rom 8 points to life in the Spirit. A like between the two is Rom 7:14 -- the law is spiritual. That is why in Romans 8 we are told that the flesh cannot please God.

Gordon Fee notes in Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, Paul is not saying that the normal Christian life should be one of a tug-of-war between the flesh and the spirit. I think he correctly observes that for Paul, the normal experience of the Christian should be a life lived in the Spirit. Therefore, we should set our minds on things of the Spirit, and have life and peace (Rom 8:6). Still, we do not do this perfectly, and to the extent that we don't we will have more of a Rom 7 experience.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Phil. 4:8-9 (NRSVA)

That's my two cents worth.

YBIC,
Winghead

"...you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31 (NLT)

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 6/22/2002 7:10 PM (GMT -6)

Thanks Bro's. I must have worded myself kinda badly, 'cause I agree with both your responses too!

I was actually trying to set aside the traditional approach of seeing the chapter as either exclusively pre- or post-conversion. It could certainly be both, though contextually there's reason to believe that Paul is arguing for this historicall FROM his experience with the Law prior to faith in Christ. Fee makes a similar point I think.

It's Sunday AM. Gotta run to church!

Later,
Tom

"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde

Winghead
Registered Member

Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 132

Posted 6/23/2002 7:19 AM (GMT -6)

Tom,

quote:
It could certainly be both, though contextually there's reason to believe that Paul is arguing for this historicall FROM his experience with the Law prior to faith in Christ. Fee makes a similar point I think.

I think you are right. Fee's point is that for Paul, the new life in Christ should be a life in the Spirit, so the fruit of the Spirit is what Paul expects to be normative, and the fruit of the flesh, should be increasingly a part of our history.

Speaking from experience, I find that this is the case, to the extent I "set my mind on things of the spirit." To the extent that I don't, I end up with Rom 7 experience. Fee also correctly observes that in this life we are not necessarily going to be completely walking in the Spirit. (Notice, I did not say "perfectly". One might argue that is is possible to perfectly walking in the spirit in this life, as we learn how to submit to the work of the Spirit in our lives. I am thinking of David, who while he was a sinner, he was also a man after God's own heart.)

My objection is when people try to limit Rom 7 exclusively to our pre-salvation history. 1 John 1:9 tells us we all sin, and if we sin, I suggest we do so in the flesh. Anyone who claims to be completely walking in the Spirit is suspect to me. That said, I think Fee's observation that Paul sees life in the Spirit to be normative is important. We are not to make excuses for being in the flesh. Certainly, contextually, Romans 7 does not allow for this. Instead, we need to fix our eyes on the goal.

Interestingly, this might be a where Libertarian Creaturely Free Will (LCFW) comes in. It seems that whether or not we walk in the Spirit is determined by our will to do so. Our ability to do so depends on the Holy Spirit.

Yours in Christ,
Winghead

"...you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31 (NLT)

Starkman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747

Posted 6/23/2002 9:40 AM (GMT -6)

It is one of the largest mistakes we Christians make . . .okay, not anyone on this board! . . . when we think that somehow the old nature is no more merely because we have entered into the new sphere of relating to God through Christ. Romans 7, it seems to me, is neither addressing pre- nor post-conversion as much as it is addressing the spheres that exist simultaneously for both non-Christian and Christian alike; couched in the framework of Jew/Gentile, law and apart from/outside of the law.

It's something I'm considering and will have to think more upon, but that's what's going on in my head about the issue of Romans 7.

Thanks TGB for your insights. I saved your post to my personal notes to use someday and sound like I really know what the hek I'm saying!!!

For the discussion,

Starkman

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